That picture pretty much sums up the entire Willamette Valley, I think. Also it’s kind of neat.

For those of you anxiously awaiting more photoblogging, you’re in luck. Over the past couple of weeks, I decided to check out some of the local state parks I’d never been to: Luckiamute Landing and Sarah Helmick. Both are about a 20 minute drive from me and from each other.

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Oregon, Photoblogging

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So, it was a beautiful day in the Oregon neighborhood this week. Got up to 80 degrees a couple times, bright, sunny, clear, the whole bit.

Which is why I took a trip to Mary’s Peak last week, when it was still 66 and slightly cloudy. Planning, as you might note, is a skill I possess. That said, it all worked out interestingly, as you shall soon see.

For those of you not from around here, Mary’s Peak is a roughly 4,000 foot tall mountain that’s the tallest thing in the vicinity, and is pretty much visible all over the valley. If you were in school, or in Scouts like I was, you will have been here quite a number of times, usually when it’s nice and sunny out for the best possible view.

As best I can figure, I haven’t actually been there since high school, so decided to take a couple hours and drive up, since it’s fairly close to Corvallis down Highway 34, which is…rather windier than I remembered once you hit the mountains. It’s been a while.

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Oregon, Photoblogging

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Back in the days when Monroe Elementary School was actually a K-8 institution rather than a middle school, somewhere in the early 90s, somebody came up with the idea of sticking small outdoor fitness courts in schools and parks and such. This was not, I feel, an idea without some level of trouble, since they were uncovered and, get this, it kind of rains a lot in Oregon. Too, the one they gave us sat in a bed of wood chips, which strikes me as the singularly worst workout idea in the history of the world for people who are about to work out and get sweaty, and who are probably wearing low cut shoes.

I mean, if I can figure this sort of thing out in 7th grade or so, how hard can it possibly be?

This is all to say that I was somewhat surprised to find another one of these when I went roaming about the park Monday. I was somewhat less surprised to find it carpeted in mulch, which is somewhat further down the Worst Ideas In History scale than wood chips, but still pretty far up there.

Really, what’s so wrong about grass, I ask you.

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Oregon, Photoblogging

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